25 replies to this topic

[Qwinn]

So reading the Codex, one of the (few) primary knocks against PS:T seems to be that it doesn't actually have much in the way of Choices & Consequences. There's a bit of truth to that, but I think in some cases C&C was intended but got cut due to bugs or simply unfinished. So let's actually analyze it and perhaps someone can point me to more cases where C&C can be restored.

I can think of three ways where I already restored some C&C:

1. The way you treat Dak'kon now has significant consequences in terms of his blade and mannerisms changing.
2. I restored consequences to turning in the Anarchists to the Harmonium.
3. Fixed various aggro issues such that attacking certain people tends to make the correct other people angry

Those were the biggest things that, during my initial plays with the unmodded game, I thought -should- have had consequences but didn't.

Can anyone else think of any choices in the game that you thought -should- have had consequences, but didn't? If so, I can look at those choices specifically and see if there was something buried that didn't get implemented or whatnot.

Qwinn

P.S. Had another brief exchange with CA. He seems amenable to a Q&A with me regarding original developer intent sometime after Alpha Protocol ships, which from googling seems to be slated for October 2009. Next release won't be till either after that happens, or I've determined that it's probably not gonna happen.

Edited by Qwinn, 13 April 2009 - 11:42 AM.

[scient]

P.S. Had another brief exchange with CA. He seems amenable to a Q&A with me regarding original developer intent sometime after Alpha Protocol ships, which from googling seems to be slated for October 2009. Next release won't be till either after that happens, or I've determined that it's probably not gonna happen.

That would be pretty sweet.


You did a lot of work fixing Godsmen's scripts so TNO actions determine how the faction treats him (edit: I guess this would fit into point #3).


Choices regarding morale really only affects Dak'kon and to a lesser extent Annah. Even then, almost all of Annah's checks are set to or around base starting value of 10. While there are a number of instances where both Grace and Morte can gain/lose morale, there are no checks for Grace and only one check for Morte near end game. Since this stat was abandoned in vanilla game, any existing consequences attached to it were effectively ignored. As to where you would restore them, not sure.

edit:
Also, there is Deionarra's curse and I could of sworn you could piss off one of the Godsmen and have him curse you.

Edited by scient, 13 April 2009 - 01:42 PM.

[Qwinn]

edit:
Also, there is Deionarra's curse

Hmm! Good call. Yeah, I'll check it out and see if it has any actual effect. And yep, that's the sort of thing I'm looking for.

and I could of sworn you could piss off one of the Godsmen and have him curse you.

Her, actually, and yeah, I fixed that in version 2.0. Sarossa's curses do work if you lie to her now, and they are in fact pretty damn nasty.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 13 April 2009 - 01:47 PM.

[Qwinn]

Nope, the variable that gets set when Deionarra curses you ("Deionarra_Curse") doesn't appear to get used in any scripts or any dialogue other than hers. So unless it's referenced in the engine (which I doubt), it doesn't appear to do anything.

That's something I'll definitely ask CA about, though, if/when I get the chance.

Qwinn

[scient]

There is failing at trying stealing from Lothar (Lothar_Mad global) having no consequences. I'll try to see if I can recall any others.

edit: There is no reference in engine to Deionarra's curse.

Edited by scient, 13 April 2009 - 01:58 PM.

[Qwinn]

Oh, and I just thought of one that bugged me: Signing the Dead Contracts. It especially seems that it should have a consequence since Fell warns you not to sign anything, but other than some dialogue and alignment hits, there doesn't seem to be any. That's definitely also another for the list to ask CA about.

Qwinn

[ghostdog]

1. The way you treat Dak'kon now has significant consequences in terms of his blade and mannerisms changing.

You restored that? I actually thought that this was in the vanilla game but that is probably because my first playthrough was many years ago and all other were with your fixpack. Fantastic job by the way.

Now that I think of it , are there any consequences to the number deaths you'll have during the game? Since each time you die, a random soul is taken in your place, maybe this should have an effect to the number (or power) of the souls that hunt you.

[Qwinn]

You restored that? I actually thought that this was in the vanilla game but that is probably because my first playthrough was many years ago and all other were with your fixpack. Fantastic job by the way.

Thanks (tho in this case, scient should get the credit), and it -was- sorta-kinda in the vanilla game. What happened is that Dak'kon's morale got reset to 10 every 8 game hours. This made actually getting very positive or very negative morale with him very difficult, as you'd have to incur a lot of hits very quickly to get it to go above or below any threshold. The exception is completing the Circle of Zerthimon, which puts it at 20.

Dak'kon's blade only updated when he reached certain fighter levels... 4, 7 and 10, I think. IF you managed to have a high or low morale at that time, then yes, his morale would have an effect on his sword.

So what that boils down to is, yeah, it was in the vanilla game IF you just -happened- to level Dak'kon to levels 4, 7 or 10 within 8 game hours of finishing the Circle of Zerthimon. Which is extremely, extremely unlikely unless you had metagaming knowledge to do this, and I don't think that information was widely known... never saw it mentioned in any walkthroughs or anything. And if you got the upgrade at level 4 or 7, you'd lose it at the next upgrade point. So really, the only way you could get -and keep- the sword morale upgrade was to do the Circle of Zerthimon immediately before Dak'kon hit fighter level 10. Not good odds.

Scient gets the full credit for fixing morale so that that doesn't happen anymore.

Now that I think of it , are there any consequences to the number deaths you'll have during the game? Since each time you die, a random soul is taken in your place, maybe this should have an effect to the number (or power) of the souls that hunt you.

A good question. I never noticed a death-counter being incremented when you die in dialogue, but there could certainly be one being incremented when you die in combat. And I did hear someone once claim that it does increase the number of shadows in the Fortress, but I didn't take the time to verify that. I'll look into it once this thread accumulates a few different things to look for, as that one will be a bit more complicated to check on.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 13 April 2009 - 02:11 PM.

[scient]

Oh, and I just thought of one that bugged me: Signing the Dead Contracts. It especially seems that it should have a consequence since Fell warns you not to sign anything, but other than some dialogue and alignment hits, there doesn't seem to be any. That's definitely also another for the list to ask CA about.

Ya, the whole thing with Coppereyes and fake Dustman contracts.

Thanks (tho in this case, scient should get the credit), and it -was- sorta-kinda in the vanilla game. What happened is that Dak'kon's morale got reset to 10 every 8 game hours. This made actually getting very positive or very negative morale with him very difficult, as you'd have to incur a lot of hits very quickly to get it to go above or below any threshold. The exception is completing the Circle of Zerthimon, which puts it at 20.
...

There was also the issue of making it extremely hard to get it down to negative without it rolling over to 20. Even with metagaming, there was really no way of knowing about this.

A good question. I never noticed a death-counter being incremented when you die in dialogue, but there could certainly be one being incremented when you die in combat. And I did hear someone once claim that it does increase the number of shadows in the Fortress, but I didn't take the time to verify that. I'll look into it once this thread accumulates a few different things to look for, as that one will be a bit more complicated to check on.

Well, there is offset 0x2e0 which determines MURDER/LADY/KILL_%s globals. As to whether this determines the number of shadows, not sure.

Edited by scient, 13 April 2009 - 02:18 PM.

[Qwinn]

Okay, I couldn't resist looking. There definitely IS significant code there that makes more shadows spawn in the fortress depending on how often you died... (the variable is named "Death"). The spawn increases occur at 5, 10, and 15 deaths.

Whether it works or not, I don't know, but the code and intent is definitely there and, if it -doesn't- work, I will definitely make it do so.

Incidentally, the counter IS incremented if you kill yourself for Awaiting Death. That's the only case it gets increased for dying in dialogue, though. It is not incremented if you let Jolmi kill you, and I will definitely add that. When this thread is worn out, I'll add it to the Known Issues thread. Can anyone else think of cases where you are killed in dialogue? Would the githyanki cutscene in the Lower Ward count as a full death? I'd tend to think yes.

EDIT: Oh yeah, you can kill yourself to embarrass the speaker in the Sensate Hall too. Will increment it there as well.

The Death variable is checked in the following dialogues: Awaiting Death, Sere, Nordom, TO, and when writing a regret on your skin.

I have no idea if the numerous deaths you -have- to incur to get into your tomb count. They probably should.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 13 April 2009 - 02:30 PM.

[Qwinn]

Well, the counter definitely -is- getting incremented by normal deaths. In fact, maybe too much. It's set to 20 near the end of my last game, and even counting all the tomb deaths and so forth, I don't recall dying so often. But I suppose I could've.

EDIT: Hmm, I probably did die a few times testing the Expanded Deionarra's Truth mod. Ick, I'll have to find a way to decrement it for those deaths, they shouldn't count.

EDIT 2: Yeah, I think I died a few times doing the Candlestick Quest too. Yeah, the 20 count is probably pretty accurate, come to think of it.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 13 April 2009 - 02:50 PM.

[ghostdog]

Would the githyanki cutscene in the Lower Ward count as a full death? I'd tend to think yes.

I would think so too.

[Qwinn]

Ok then... I'll add increments for: letting Jolmi kill you, letting the Githyanki in LW kill you, and killing yourself to embarrass Death's Advocate. That's all I can remember for dialogue-deaths. I'll also decrement the counter to cancel out deaths that shouldn't count in the Expanded Deionarra's Truth mod.

I remember there were a LOT of shadows in the fortress in that last game, more than I thought was normal, and I doubt I ever had so many deaths in previous games. So my gut tells me that, yeah, that's all working.

Ya know, between this and the fix/nerf to bonus hit points from constitution, the Fortress could actually wind up being semi challenging, heh.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 13 April 2009 - 03:11 PM.

[```]

There was a petrified mage in the Clerk's Ward gallery that killed you once you de-petrified it. I think that counts too?

And perhaps the collector at the mortuary gates who can smuggle you in by killing you?

Edited by ```, 13 April 2009 - 03:59 PM.

[scient]

Pretty much whenever "Kill(Protagonist)" is used like with Barkis and your eye. It doesn't look like Kill() uses "nameless" or "player1" apart from cheatbook which we can ignore. I don't think any other script function is used to kill TNO from dialog. I would think that Damage() would act as if PC died in combat.

Edited by scient, 13 April 2009 - 04:21 PM.

[Qwinn]

There was a petrified mage in the Clerk's Ward gallery that killed you once you de-petrified it. I think that counts too?

And perhaps the collector at the mortuary gates who can smuggle you in by killing you?

Good thoughts! Yes, in both cases you can die. Pox CAN let you in to the mortuary by actually killing you, though you can also just pretend to be dead with 13+ charisma.

However, I don't need to change anything for either of these cases, cause if either Pox or the statue kill you, you really ARE Kill()ed, so the counter should've already been getting incremented anyway. The other cases mentioned so far, you're not actually killed, it just does a fade out and fade in.

EDIT: Scient, I believe any use of Kill() will actually increment the counter. I'll test to be sure. What I'm concerned with is those cases in dialogue where you are supposely killed but the Kill() function isn't actually used... like with Jolmi, the githyanki, etc.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 13 April 2009 - 04:26 PM.

[Qwinn]

Wyrmlord over at the Codex mentioned Ojo. And yes, there's more to Ojo, and it does involve a pretty major unimplemented C&C.

Here's what I posted over there:

There -is- actually more to Ojo, buried in the files. I'm actually not entirely sure how much, if any, of what I'm about to mention actually works in game, because I much prefer the Dead Nations to the Warrens of Thought.

But, in the game files, there's this: If you take one of the more "evil" options with Many As One, such as telling him the Silent King is dead, or that he's way too strong, etc., this was supposed to actually cause MAO and the wererats to wipe out the Buried Village. When you went there, Ojo would be the only one left, and if you talked to him there was a good (though avoidable) chance that he'd turn into a wererat and attack you.

That's all there is though. If anything else was supposed to result, I haven't seen it. And there isn't any dialogue with anyone in the Warrens of Thought that reflects that invasion after the fact.

Still, I could probably implement it. Would you all -want- that in there as a pretty serious piece of C&C, even if it's not reflected in anyone's dialogue afterwards (besides Ojo's)?

And in a later post I added:

As for implementing the MAO invasion of the Buried Village, one problem would be what to do with Marta. Considering who she "really" is, it doesn't seem right to have her meet the same fate. I'd probably make her the only other survivor, and add a bit of dialogue where she mutters fearfully about the ratses and how she locked her door till they went away, etc.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 13 April 2009 - 06:33 PM.

[Arkain]

[...] Can anyone else think of cases where you are killed in dialogue? [...]

How about some of the Marta stuff? I think when she cracks your skull open you're told that you start screaming before everything turns dark. I always thought you died in that case. I can't really recall the other possibilities right now, but maybe there's more.

Edited by Arkain, 14 April 2009 - 04:59 AM.

[Qwinn]

Oh yikes... yeah, lemme see, I certainly hope there was a "Kill()" in Marta's situation, but there may well not have been. That could drive the counter up quite a bit if I add it... but you're right, it does certainly seem like it should.

EDIT: Nope, Kill() isn't used. Interestingly, the one -useful- bit Marta does, the one where she searches your intestines to find a ring, is the only one where it doesn't read like you die. Despite the fact that she pulls out your intestines. That bit doesn't include a fadein-fadeout. The rest do.

So in at least one case, it seems like your regeneration manages to keep up with the damage being done, and you don't actually die. In theory, that could apply to all of them, but I think I will go with the standard that if it includes a fadein/fadeout sequence, then you died.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 14 April 2009 - 05:18 AM.

[scient]

I always thought TNO just passed out from pain rather than actually dying. That would knock the counter up by atleast ~5 if you didn't know where to look.